Calm Before The Storm
by Countryole
Summary: Abby is faced with a difficult decision after her borderland trip to Mexico. She tries to come to terms with what she's learned, and what she knows she'll have to do. Mean while the storm keeps brewing. Tag to the episode Patriot Down.


_Calm Before The Storm_

Every time she breathes Abby can still feel the stale dust of Mexico coating her lungs.

It follows her everywhere now that she's back on American soil. It's in her lab when she's working on DNA samples for the serial killer case. It's in autopsy and all over Ducky's hands and the corpse of Pedro Hernandez. The dust even comes with her to Gibbs' basement- and that's when it's suffocating, unbearable. The mere thought of inhaling is enough to make her head spin.

And it does.

All she can think is that she wants it to rain and not just because spring showers give her an excuse to use her extravagant umbrellas. Abby needs the cleansing substance to wash the stain of her borderland trip from her skin. It won't though, no matter how many times she tries to wish the nearest cumulous cloud in existence to turn into a raging storm. It's times like these that normally find Abby seeking solace in her lab, but now that the machines she loves are working against her it becomes a cage instead of the sanctuary she so desperately needs.

For the most part Abby keeps to herself, staying busy with mindless things like recalibrating major mass spec or cleaning the ballistics room. And for the most part the team leaves her alone, even the usually unflappable McGee. None of them are quite brave enough to test the tumultuous waters of her ever-fluctuating mood. However, Ziva is not as easily assuaged by threats of death without forensic evidence. While the boys scatter under Abby's murderous gaze, Ziva holds her defensive position on the grounds of a lunch offer. It's an attempt to draw the normally happy goth out of her depressive shell, but she isn't feeling amiable enough to accept the invitation.

"No. I'm fine." The lie slips past her teeth all too easily while she smiles. "You guys go on ahead without me. I'll get lunch later."

For a moment it looks like Ziva might try to press the non-matter further. Non-matter because Abby never actually said anything was wrong, not really, and her screaming eyes don't count. But after a moment of indecision NCIS' resident ninja decides against any further questioning. Ziva bows out of the potential war zone gracefully, but not without casting one last glance of concern over her shoulder as she heads for the elevator. She's learned to leave the forensic scientist to her emotional spectrums, except this time Abby's little sister syndrome panic has chosen a less expressive form in which to manifest itself.

Instead of her typical vivacious and outspoken worry, she drowns in agonizing silence.

And she is in this agonizing silence for hours, never actually bothering to fix her rapidly decreasing blood sugar with a cafpow! or tangible lunch like she'd promised. Instead Abby goes over paper work, analyzing evidence and rereading her reports. She double, triple and quadruple checks her ballistics tests. She recalculates, retraces her steps, but no matter how many times she tries to prove herself wrong, she is always right. Abby wishes that Paloma Reynosa had kept her antique jewelry to herself. She wishes that she had never pulled up that God-awful article of Gibbs' family, a wife and daughter, brutally gunned down and defenseless.

But most of all she wishes she'd never gone to Mexico in the first place, because if it weren't for Mexico everything she has come to learn during her time with NCIS wouldn't lie in shambles at her feet.

That Leroy Jethro Gibbs is a good man. That he is a just man.

But good, just men don't murder in cold blood.

They don't _kill_.

And she's not sure what scares her more, the fact that she will be responsible for charging Gibbs with murder or that the truth doesn't change the fact that she loves him like a father anyways.

Abby pulls away from the paper work in an angry whirl of pigtails and jingling chains. She stands beneath the windows of her lab, where people pass by on the sidewalk overhead going about their normal day. Arms crossed, eyes tired, she stares up at the same glass that was shattered years ago by the same brand of ammunition that's currently burning a metaphorical hole through her heart. In the thousandths of a second it takes for her to blink, Abby is suspended in the moment by an overwhelming sense of inevitability. She can't help but feel how wrong everything seems, how time passes so quickly that the season seems out of place.

Spring is supposed to be a time of growth, of life, but she can't help but remember all the things it's taken from her too. They lost Kate, they lost Jenny, they nearly lost Ziva and now...

Thinking about it makes it hard to breathe and she can taste the dust again, thick on her tongue as if she were still standing on that ridge next to the truck, automatic rifles pointed at her head.

She's drawn away from her racing thoughts by the ringing of a telephone calling her back to her job. The teleconference with Director Vance and Alejandro only serves as a bitter reminder that there are people who have questions, but Abby isn't even sure if she can answer her own. The emptiness doubt creates hangs impenetrable in her lab, like the thick humidity that coats the air of the city, crackling with energy but producing nothing from the effect.

When she hangs up the phone and turns back to the stack of papers on her desk an involuntary chill spreads across her skin. The hairs on the back of her neck stand on end as she fights off the sense of dread that's been suffocating her ever since she caught the Lapua casing in her hand, the fierce glint of the sunlight against the bronze shell seared permanently into her memory.

She closes her eyes then, an attempt to block out all the unwanted negativity that has been progressively working to send her into a downward spiral. It didn't work in Gibbs' basement though, so it doesn't work now. When she opens them again that horrible feeling that something bad is about to happen is still there, ever present and crushing in it's weight on her already unstable psyche. Abby can already see spring fading into summer with each passing day, but she continues to wish and hope for rain.

This is just the calm before the storm.

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_**A/N:** Thanks to my lovely beta, Zaedah, as always. Reviews and comments and favorites are always appreciated. 3_


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